Chapter 1

One

Present day

Kansas

Dorothy Gale of San Francisco, by way of Wichita, was a woman of many talents: adventurer extraordinaire, beloved daughter of selfless parents, sometime cliff-diver on the treacherous rocky bluffs of Madagascar, occasional Formula 1 racecar driver in Monaco, one-time elephant polo player for the under-18 USA team.

And longtime volunteer at the local animal shelters, where she held the title for getting every dog and all of the cats, save one—a one-eared, one-eyed, razor-clawed, habitual biter by the name of Cranky Earl, and for good reason—adopted in a single, record-breaking week.

A brunette with two sensible braids, weaved tight for her next adventure, and possessed of coffee-dark eyes, inherited from her dear, sweet papa—recently deceased—she was the second most beautiful lady in the state of Kansas. Why not the first? She was far too humble for bragging. That was just the way she'd been raised by her adoring mama, all her twenty-four years on this earth.

Now, some might have seen her adventuring and called her reckless, but Dorothy knew better; she had no death wish, but rather a safety net, spun by the weight and power of her parents' boundless love. A relationship so self-sacrificing and generous, certainly not transactional at all. Not one bit.

At least, that was how Dorothy's autobiography would have started if it wasn't a pack of bald-faced lies.

There were one or two truth cards in the deck, though. She did volunteer at Roscoe's Animal Shelter and Exotic Pet Hospital whenever she could. And Cranky Earl was a real cat that would never be adopted, as his personality was too close to Roscoe's own. Especially when he had to deal with idiots who fed their furry—or scaly—companion something that anyone with a lick of common sense would never have given them. But that was the end of the similarities in her make-believe autobiography.

And to be frank, Dorothy might occasionally admit to the good-looking part… she was her mother's daughter after all. Although, second best in the Sunflower State was pushing it; she'd crack the top ten thousand on a really good day, though.

Was that her mother's vanity or just self-confidence?

She hoped it was confidence, but she had to keep an eye out for the possibility that she was starting to flirt too closely with narcissism. The last thing she wanted was to actually end up like her mother, who was at that moment sitting across from her at Auntie Em's enamel-top breakfast table, holding her hands daintily in her lap, and her back away from the vinyl chair lest she get a stain on her clothes or stickiness on her flawless hands. Absurd, considering the spotlessness of the kitchen around her.

"Dotty, darling, be reasonable," her mother said.

Dorothy hated the childish nickname her mother refused to drop, which in turn was likely the reason her mother refused to drop it. "I am being reasonable. You're the one who isn't."

In truth, her mother probably was the second most beautiful woman in Kansas at the moment. The trouble was, her personality made most men—and over the last year Dorothy had heard there had been a lot of them—put her in the bottom two in any state if they stayed around longer than an evening.

"What would your father say? He'd be so upset to hear that his daughter got greedy and wouldn't give his dear wife—the woman who spent seventy-nine hours giving birth to you—a dime," her mother replied. The supposed time spent birthing Dorothy always fluctuated and had once hit an unbelievable five days. Dorothy would've laughed in her mother's face if there was anything funny about the situation.

One would think that the attention her mother commanded and her limited fame in the art scene would be enough. But even before Dorothy's father had passed the previous year, there had only ever been one thing that her mother constantly cared about—far more than her biological daughter, in fact—and that was wealth. It's why her mother had married Dorothy's unemotional, not-quite-handsome father in the first place.

Dorothy knew her mother didn't actually need the money. For her, it was a concrete score card she could measure against others, since things like looks and artistic talent could be so subjective.

"Don't bring Dad into this," Dorothy shot back, neglecting to add, He wouldn't have wanted you to have a penny of it. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Her mother shrugged her tanned, well-defined shoulders, on full display thanks to the sequined, silk camisole that probably cost at least a Kansas-winter gas bill payment. "Don't make me bring lawyers into all of this," she countered. "They can be so expensive, and the offer I'm giving you is more than fair. Fifty percent of your father's portion of the family trust will keep you from having to work a day in your life. And it's not like you'll ever get married and need it for a family…"

Her mother had one day decided that Dorothy was unequivocally a lesbian since her daughter had never so much as batted an eyelash at a boy while in her vicinity and preferred to wear overalls like the ones her Uncle Henry wore. And, apparently, when she was six, Dorothy had screamed the house down when her mother tried to force her into a poofy pageant dress. She'd done the same—only on the inside, that time—at sixteen for prom. That had been evidence enough for Mrs. Gale. As for Dorothy, she couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to wear overalls. They had so many pockets it was obscene!

"Plus," her mother continued, "your grandfather must have been growing senile when he put the caveat in the Gale trust that none of the money could go to anyone marrying into the Gale family. It's almost as crazy as some of its members." She gave a pointed look at Aunt Emma's back.

Dorothy's actually loving aunt stiffened near the coffee pot that was just coming to a boil when the word "senile" hit the air and doubly so with the word "crazy." So far, she had managed to not join the conversation, likely out of respect for her niece, but a few more jabs at the family and her aunt might have grabbed Dorothy's mother by the darkened roots of her bleached blond hair and dragged her out of the farmhouse, hoofing her into the pigsty with the rest of the slops.

"Grandpa wanted it to stay in the direct family line for his own reasons," Dorothy said. "Auntie Em gets my share if I turn down any part of it."

Her mother stiffened at the "Auntie" endearment. Family bonding was so foreign to her narcissistic mother it actually seemed to cause her pain.

And then with a heart so heavy it sank into the top of her stomach, Dorothy felt compelled to add, "And if I passed away or went missing or something, the trust goes to Auntie Em as well."

Toto must have sensed Dorothy's uncomfortable shift, for he braved coming out from under her chair. He'd been hiding from Dorothy's mother since he'd performed his Houdini act out of Dorothy's bedroom and snuck into the kitchen, shiny black nose sniffing out bacon scraps and finding sour grapes instead. He risked a small defend-his-own-mama growl at Dorothy's mother.

"Did that thing just bark at me?" her mother said sharply.

"He's playing. Joining in the conversation." Dorothy used the back of her calf to scoot Toto back into hiding, the sweet terrier licking her heel for comfort—his or hers, she wasn't sure.

He was technically her mother's dog, but her mother hated dogs. All animals, in fact. She'd bought him on a whim because it was fashionable to own the breed one San Francisco summer, and while Dorothy had fallen hopelessly in love, her mother got bored and frustrated with attempting to show him off, so Dorothy was left to take care of her best friend. There was no doubt in her mind that her mother would somehow use him against her if she thought she could.

"I know how the dead and missing clauses in the trust work." Her mother's already stiff back stiffened more. "What a horrible thing to imply."

Frankly, Dorothy was surprised that her mother was self-aware enough to realize it had been an implication.

"How long will you be staying in town?" Dorothy asked reflexively. She had some classes she couldn't skip out on, but maybe if she hid over at a friend's house at night, she could outlast her mother's stay. Toto would have to come with her, of course, for his own safety.

Her mother's answer had nothing to do with Dorothy's question, but she was used to that sort of thing. "You're almost out of that college of yours that you ran away to. Honestly, you should have stayed near home in the first place and not been such a drain on your aunt and uncle. Does Wichita State even have the classes you need? You're so far from the ocean."

University of California would have been a better fit, actually, but Dorothy had "run away" to Wichita so she could stay in the only happy place she had ever known: the Gale family farm. Her parents could never be bothered with her at home, so as she grew up, school had become her babysitter.

But that had left summers.

Every year, Dorothy's uncaring parents shipped her off to Kansas through summer break. Dorothy learned to rope and ride, milk cows, clean the stalls, plant crops, spread fertilizer, drive a tractor, and a million other fun things that she dreamed about for the rest of the year. Maybe cleaning the stalls wasn't exactly fun…but it was honest work, and she loved the horses more than enough to get her hands dirty on their behalf. It wasn't as if they had opposable thumbs to do it themselves.

"You don't need to be near the ocean to learn about it," Dorothy replied defensively. "And we have plenty of field trips."

Her summers at the farm had inspired her desire to work in an animal-related field. At first, she was going to become a vet, but then she'd watched a grainy old program with Uncle Henry about the earth's oceans, brimming with marine life, and a hurricane lamp had flickered to life in her head. She was going to be a marine biologist—the perfect fit for a young girl whose only other love was competitive swimming.

Those three things—animals, swimming, and love of her second home in Kansas, plus a fourth bonus of space for Toto to run free—had congealed into her going to Wichita State. They weren't renowned for their marine biology courses, but it was driving distance to the Gale farm, and that was all that mattered.

Aunt Emma had welcomed her with open arms. The same arms belonging to the hands she now placed on Dorothy's shoulders as she moved behind her niece to defend her.

"Maybe if someone had paid for college and room and board, she could have chosen where to stay," Emma said. "Since we were the ones to step up and foot the bill for her education, you can get mad at me."

There had been a few scholarships to lighten the financial load, but before her father had passed, her uncle had been the one to write the tuition checks.

Like any other time where Dorothy's mother was confronted by anyone other than her daughter, she backed down immediately.

"Of course." She smiled her ridiculous "win everyone over" grin. Only, it had exactly zero chance of working on Emma; she knew the serpent fangs behind the fake smile. "And it was so generous of you. Only, I do worry about any cults that might get their hooks into sweet Dorothy out here."

Naturally, her mother would try and smother Auntie Em's help out by dredging up an old family secret and dropping it on her aunt's head. Emma had disappeared into the embrace of some kind of cult when she was a teenager, and no one really talked about it. Which meant Dorothy was dying for the details, she just hadn't been brave enough to ask. But when her aunt stiffened, her arms pulling away as she stood in shock, Dorothy decided she'd rather not know if it was going to cause Emma any pain.

"If you have something you want to say to me, Mother"—Dorothy leaned forward, taking the brunt of her mother's attention away from Auntie Em—"spit it out and let's hear it."

"Fine." She crossed her arms over her lap and smoothed out her creaseless, designer pencil skirt. "Now that your father is dead, I'm thinking you can afford any college you want. You don't have to stay out here in the boonies. You should come stay somewhere befitting the family name."

"Somewhere other than the Gale farm?" Dorothy raised an eyebrow.

Her mother sniffed. "You know what I mean."

"I do. You want me close by so you can have access to my part of the trust," Dorothy said bluntly.

Her mother frowned and then reached up and rubbed her cheeks as if they too were just another piece of clothing she could smooth out with a touch. "Always so aggravating, Dotty." She sighed, the frustrated exhale like a miniature tornado, spinning around the kitchen. "I wish your grandpa hadn't put that silly clause into the trust about your father needing an heir. If it hadn't been in there, I wouldn't have bothered to get pregnant with you in the first place."

With that particularly loving comment still wafting around the kitchen, Dorothy decided she'd had enough. "Your honesty is as refreshing as ever, Mom." A nickname her mother found belittling. "If you'll excuse me…"

The tea kettle chose that moment to go from a soft whistle to a full, screaming boil, and Aunt Em stepped away as Dorothy stood from the table. Her aunt pushed the doggie treat jar aside to get the tea-bag-filled one, and Toto bounded out from under Dorothy's chair to race around Emma's feet.

Dorothy wished he'd stayed out of sight and out of mind and froze for a moment as she looked at him. Her mother's attention snapped to the little dog and back to Dorothy.

"You know," her mother started, "it's a shame you won't entertain coming back to Frisco with me so we can continue to discuss this. You could calm Toto down on my flight home."

"Excuse me?" Dorothy already knew where this was heading, but foresight did nothing to rein in the sharp spike of useless outrage. "Toto isn't flying back with you." She glared down her nose at her mother and crossed her arms in defiance.

"He's my dog," her mother stated matter-of-factly. She risked putting her hands on the pristine tabletop as she pushed to a standing position, echoing her daughter. "But you can always come home and be with him there."

"He's my dog," Dorothy insisted. "You've never wanted him. You've done nothing for him since you bought him six years ago."

"Ah," her mother said, smiling sweetly. "But I did buy him."

She crossed the kitchen, skirting past the jet of steam spouting from the kettle—there wasn't going to be tea, and everyone knew it—and tried to scoop up Toto.

For Toto's part, he was not about to be manhandled by the one person he didn't like. He growled and danced away, yipping a warning at her and nipping at her grabbing hands. Dorothy's mother snatched her hands back as if she had touched the sides of the boiling-hot teakettle instead of almost being bitten by Toto.

"He bit me!" she cried out. "This rabies-ridden mutt bit me!"

She stormed across the kitchen and flopped dramatically back into the sunflower-yellow chair, the chrome legs squealing an inch or two across the timeworn vinyl floor. She put her finger in her mouth and started to suck on it as if she had been bitten by a rattler and was trying to get the venom out. It made her look like the big, spoiled baby that she was.

"He did not," Dorothy said curtly. She leaned over and snapped her fingers at Toto—who was still growling at the interloper who'd dared to try and grab him—and the pup skittered across the floor, claws tippy-tapping, and into Dorothy's arms.

When Dorothy settled back into her chair again, scratching between Toto's tufty ears to soothe him—it was obvious she couldn't go anywhere now—her mother was holding her hand in front of her and there was blood on one of her fingertips, close to the nail.

Did she rip a hangnail for this?Dorothy knew a bite when she saw it, and that wasn't it.

"Look at this!" her mother whined. "Look what he did!"

It was a little too much for Emma, who whirled around, snapping a dishcloth over her shoulder. "He didn't, and you know it."

"Still," Dorothy's mother responded in a voice that instantly fell from the peak of terror about being "rabies infected" to a pragmatic, "there is only one way to fix this" tone in a single breath. "It's best if we have him tested, considering how long he's been out here, getting into goodness knows what, chasing all sorts of critters. I believe they have to put them down and autopsy the brain… if I'm not mistaken."

She was like a cartoon villain. One extreme to the other. The only problem was Dorothy's mother was real and could—and would—do the things she was saying.

"What a horrible thing to threaten," Emma said. "He's had his jabs. All up to date. There's a folder in the back."

"I'm not threatening, I'm doing," her sister-in-law replied. "And I don't trust vets. They take the money and don't do anything. There was a whole scandal about it, but I doubt you get national papers out here in the sticks."

The last fiber of Dorothy's patience snapped. "Enough of your crap, Mother. I'm not coming home with you, and neither is my dog." She stood up from her chair fast enough that it almost toppled over. "If you want to take Toto from me, you'd better bring Sheriff Harkley and Deputy Stimper with you. And tell them I'm not giving him up without a fight, so they better bring riot gear!"

Dorothy stormed out of the kitchen, ignoring the inevitable follow-up threats and self-serving arguments that her mother threw at her back. She leaped off the white painted slats of the front porch and into the summer afternoon, wishing she was anywhere else.

A heavy feeling settled on her heart as she walked through the golden haze, her footsteps kicking up puffs of dust. The farm was the only real refuge she'd ever felt safe and unconditionally loved in. She'd always felt that, though the Kansas prairie was flat and you could see for miles, no trouble was ever going to find her there.

But, like everything else in Dorothy's life up until then, her mother had ruined that too.

When Uncle Henry found Dorothy,she was still in the main tractor barn, covered in a thin layer of wood dust from a vigorous sanding of Kansas Folly's newly replaced transom.

"Never seen that color snow before. Toto get caught in a freak summer fall? Should I start looking for the three other horsemen?" her uncle said by way of hello.

Dorothy only grunted in response as she pushed the sanding block over the white oak of the former shrimping boat's transom even faster and harder. She, however, called it a houseboat, somewhat wishfully.

"Easy, Dot," he said. "You're going to sand your way right through. It's been a while since I've been on aught bigger than a skiff, but I know holes don't make any size of boat so water-worthy."

She stopped the furious back and forth and shook her sore arm before putting the block down on the sawhorse-legged table near the houseboat she and her uncle had been restoring. The Folly had been a high school graduation gift from Henry and Emma. His logic had been that by the time they got done fixing it up, she'd have finished her bachelor's degree, and getting it in the water would be her college graduation gift.

Looking at the houseboat's current state, Dorothy would have a couple of doctorates before it was fit for living in.

Dorothy brushed off her own coating of wood dust, and her uncle put his hand on her shoulder. The moment his hand touched her shoulder, it broke through the dam of emotions she'd been plugging with distraction and a hefty amount of sweat, and her eyes sprang a leak.

He father probably would have walked away, and her mother would have warned her that no man found bawling women attractive—before she quickly made an under-the-breath remark about "I guess you don't have to worry about that"—but her uncle risked her dusty, dirty clothes and gave her a hug.

Which, of course, turned the leak into a torrent, swallowing guttural sobs with such force that it nearly gave her the hiccups.

She hugged him back and then let go, rubbing her palms into her muddy-sawdust cheeks. She'd left an imprint on his own paint-splattered overalls.

"Em told me what happened," he said once she gathered her breath. "How you holding up, kiddo?"

Dorothy sniffed and pulled out her checkered handkerchief to blow her dripping, tear-swollen nose.

"Just when I think she couldn't be any more horrible, she pulls some shit like this," Dorothy said.

"Language," he said.

"Sorry," she replied, doubling down on feeling wretched now that she had cussed in front of him. "She's just got me so… so fluffing mad! I didn't mean to cuss."

"No," he replied with a laugh. "I meant that's not strong enough of a word."

A smile threatened to break through her pain.

He continued after a moment's consideration, "Maybe she can grow a nice mustache so she can twirl it as she hatches her next nefarious plan." He faked an old school movie mustache twirl as he spoke. He was clean shaven, but the point came across anyway.

The smile came in full at that. Dorothy laughed and some of the tightness in her stomach loosened up.

"She gets it waxed off," she said. "But she's still got plenty of fur coats. Now that she wants to put Toto down, her journey to becoming Cruella de Vil is complete."

Henry went over to the workbench and started putting away the various tools scattered across the top. "If I had any doubt about how twisted up she has you over all of this, I'd know it now. I don't think I've ever seen you not put a tool back where it belongs when you were done with it."

"What do I do?"

"About the tools?" Henry joked. "That's easy. It's why I traced an outline of the tool on the wall with a marker. Just match them up, square pen to round hole style."

He made a big show of mismatching the wood plane with the handsaw and then switched them back again.

Dorothy rolled her eyes. Henry's dad jokes were the only ones she had ever known; her own father hadn't exactly been the amusing sort, but Henry always insisted on calling them "uncle jokes," as they were only related to being funny.

"You know I'm not talking about the tools." Dorothy sighed.

Henry turned around and leaned back against the large, well-loved tool bench, the old wood covered in decades of stains and marks, documenting hundreds of projects and repairs. He hooked his thumbs in the blue straps of his faded bib and brace overalls just like her dad used to do with his suit suspenders when he wanted to appear pensive. Despite the two not being blood relatives, her uncle never looked more alike and more dissimilar to her father than when he did the gesture. In every other way, the men were opposite ends of the same person.

The businessman and the farmer.

The father and the one who took care of her like he was.

"Seems to me that you have plenty of choices," Henry said thoughtfully. "Some of them hard. Some of them harder. And almost all of them bad."

There was some hope in the words. "Almost all?"

"I'm not no educated man like my brother-in-law was, but I do know what's right from what's wrong. And even though I suspect that the legal ‘right' may be on your mother's side, there is a moral right. And sometimes doing something wrong is what's required to be in the right."

"Did you just talk full circle?" Dorothy said with a chuckle.

"You know what I mean."

"I really don't, Uncle Henry."

"I'm saying, sometimes you have to play dirty to make the moral thing happen."

"Are we going to have Peruvian assassins take her out?" It was a long-standing inside joke from one of the dumbest movies they'd ever watched, but she wanted to ease Henry's worries just like he'd done for her. She didn't have dad jokes or uncle jokes like he did, but she did have their weekend "find the worst movie to drop on Netflix that week and watch the ironic hell out of it so they could come up with stupid comments for inside gags to use later."

"I'm afraid I'm not sure what kind of money the Peruvians use, so we're probably going to have to go with my other plan," he said, grinning.

"And that is?"

"We take Toto up to Miller's farm and have Jacob look after him for a bit." Henry laid out his plan. "I'll say he ran off when the storm blew in and probably got sucked up by a tornado."

The fact that her impeccably honest uncle was prepared to lie for her started her tearing up again. Before she could tell him that she didn't want him lying for her, he rolled his right arm and grabbed his shoulder.

"Lucky for you, there is a storm coming in," he said. "Hopefully, the tornado joke stays a joke."

Dorothy looked outside, expecting to see dark clouds stampeding over the flat Kansas prairies like a herd of huffing, puffing gray stallions. Instead, it was the late, dusky blue and dusty orange of uninterrupted sunset, bronzing her corner of paradise. She wasn't surprised. Uncle Henry had "farmer bones" and was never wrong when he predicted bad weather.

"Soon?" Dorothy asked.

"It'll show up in the next day or two," he replied, adjusting his shoulder for confirmation. "You know how the Kansas weather is…"

"If you don't like the current weather…" she started.

"…then just wait ten minutes." He smiled as he finished.

She hugged him again.

When they separated, Henry pulled a red paisley-print handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped off his forehead and the back of his neck. Then, he folded the kerchief to the dry side and, lightly holding Dorothy's chin, dabbed away the tear stains that meandered through her grubby face, like she was a kid again, running to comfort after skinning her knees.

"You coming in for dinner, or you going to eat out here in the barn?" he asked. "Your maw is gone back to the city. I expect she'll return tomorrow to have at you again, though. Emma ran her off, but knowing your mother, she has the sense to git when she's in trouble, but not the wherewithal to remember to stay gone."

"I'm going to stay and work on the boat a little longer," she answered. "If I get hungry, I'll grab a couple of granola bars from my camping pack below deck. I never unpacked it after Daniel and I went to Woodridge Park."

"You broke up with him six months back. Those things still good?"

"As good as Auntie Em's finest cherry preserves in winter." She winked. "They'll still be good when the other three horsemen arrive."

"Fair enough," he said, laughing. "Of course that camping crap is all rabbit food anyway. No wonder it doesn't spoil."

He strolled out through wide, open barn door.

"Better rabbit food than those Twinkies you keep sneaking when you're in the tractor," she called out after him.

His boots skipped a step and his shoulders hunched. He turned back, looking as guilty as a toddler caught with his hand in both the cookie jar and the pie dish. "How did you kn?—?"

Dorothy didn't let him finish. "You really need to throw the wrappers away when you're snacking in the backhoe."

He gave a thumbs-up and headed back into the warmth of a family home that waited for her too.

As welcome as his help would have been, Dorothy couldn't let Henry get involved with her mother problems this time.

It was going to be trouble enough having her mother bouncing around the area, trying to get a cut of a fortune that wasn't due to her. And even more trouble if she let Henry get caught up in some kind of crossfire lawsuit for "dognapping" or some other inane accusation.

What Dorothy needed was to get herself out of town. If her mother was going to be in Kansas, then Dorothy needed to get as far away from the state as she possibly could.

A gust of wind whistled in like a stranger, scattering the ever-present clumps of straw and hay across the dirt floor. Upstairs in the hayloft, a shutter banged. Off in the far distance, rain clouds were gathering out of the gauzy sunset as if magically summoned by Uncle Henry's bone-barometer.

He was never wrong, and maybe it wasn't just the weather that he'd been right about.